From the Trenches: Apple vs Flash Part 2

Thu, May. 20 2010

Thursday, May 20th 0956 hours

The big thing that everyone is missing in this Flash War is the fact that Flash is not just video.Sure, it's the preferred platform of the moment because practically everyone has Flash and can run it in their browser the same as the next.But if HTML5 or some other technology bumps Flash from its web video throne, Flash will still be the only competent authoring tool for interactivity and animation on the web.Sure, we've all learned that big splashy Flash intros are bad.And we all know that what most people want on the web is content and they want to get it quickly without jumping through hoops.But do you really want to eat chicken every single day?What about the one day out of the week when you want to change things up, to try something different? To use your imagination?How else are we to achieve the seamless cinematic quality of a big beautiful Flash site produced in capable and creative hands?Or a game?Club Penguin anyone?Farmville?Do you think it can be done in HTML5?Have you seen the amazing "look what I did in HTML5" animations floating around?They stink.According to a 2009 Quantcast study, mobile web is less than 1.5% of all web browsing in the US - and that includes the iPhone, iPod Touch and every other mobile device you can think of. Mobile computing is clearly on the rise, and the iPad will likely add to Apple's mobile share but we're not talking total domination here - not by a long shot.
It's a safe bet that the remaining 98-point-something percent of web users will not abandon their Flash-enabled browsing experience anytime soon.
Flash is safe...for now.